District to appeal state’s finding in N-word incident

District to appeal state’s finding in N-word incident

Maury County schools Director Eddie Hickman said Tuesday he plans to challenge parts of state investigation that concluded administrators failed to properly address a complaint involving a student who called another student the N-word.

The eight-page report issued by the Tennessee Department of Education Office of Civil Rights concluded there is sufficient evidence to “indicate a finding of noncompliance and discrimination,” in violation of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

The school district has until Sept. 1 to develop a plan for providing cultural sensitivity training to all district students, employees and administrators as well as implementing a safety plan for the alleged victim if he must ride the same bus for this coming school year.

Hickman said the district has two weeks to file an appeal challenging any of the findings in the report.

“That’s about all I can say, because they’re saying there is possible litigation involved,” he said in a telephone interview Tuesday.

Jake Wolaver, the district’s attorney, also declined to discuss the report, although Hickman confirmed that part of an executive session conducted by the school board Thursday night included a meeting with Wolaver about the situation.

Brentwood attorney Gary Blackburn, who represents the student and his grandmother, Katrina Donaldson, said Tuesday he intends to file a federal lawsuit.

“In my humble judgment they could benefit from it (sensitivity training),” Blackburn said. “Why would a public entity involved in the education of children not want to have programs to assist them in having a greater degree of sensitivity to racial issues in this day and time? I don’t see the downside.”

Donaldson claims the boy, a middle-school student, was kicked and called the N-word by a Mt. Pleasant elementary school student on two separate occasions — Jan. 28 and Feb. 10 — while riding to school on a school bus. She contends the district declined to document or address these allegations and refused to give any documentation of the school’s response, according to a report by the state investigator.

She further claims district administrators mistreated her by repeatedly using the N-word during an April meeting she recorded. The district denied bullying or harassing Ms. Donaldson.

In the state’s report, the investigator evaluated the reasonableness of the district’s overall response and concluded “the evidence does not indicate that the District responded appropriately to the allegations.”

“The District did not indicate (or provide documentation) that it considered these incidents as harassment or that it evaluated these circumstances under the hostile environment analysis,” according to the investigator.

The report further notes that separate investigations by middle school and elementary school principals left it unclear who was in charge and what the district’s policy is in handling this type of situation.

As for the audiotapes of the meeting between Donaldson and some administrators, the state investigator noted that the N-word was stated at least three times in a March 24 meeting and at least 10 times in the March 19 meeting. District employees stated they only used the term in relating the alleged events.

Donaldson also used the N-word at least once in the same meeting, according to the report.

But, the investigator said the audiotapes reveal a “defensiveness and almost hostility” toward Donaldson and “seemed to inflame an already tense situation.”

In a footnote of the report, the investigator points out that attendance and discipline Director Mary Carter, who is black, used the N-word in a conversation with the investigator.

When the investigator pointed out Carter’s repeated use of the word and questioned her practice of using it, Carter “explained that she was not afraid to use the term and had been raised to not be offended by it.”

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